Leaderboard

Idk if it’s funnier if he was named CAT-5 before or after he knocked down all of those trees 🤔

As the CC or DO, you (CAT 5) should be taking a long hard look in the mirror at your own leadership style if you feel like you need to hand out dozens of Q3s in your own damn squadron. I can’t imagine looking at my section and seeing a single Q3 let alone dozens.

WTF is with all the command directed Q3s? I've gathered that the heavies seem to use them as punishment, but I know we didn't have a single one in my career at my squadron. A keg/equivalent booze and stand up in front of the squadron to brief the fuck up. Why put so many black marks on your people, when there are better ways to get your point across? I feel for these dudes who have to explain a Q3 in an interview when they can't say that their boss was the lead rower in the douche canoe.

Quick thread off-ramp: SAC gave us a patch to wear on our jackets. When the staffing was done, it was given to Gen Chain for final approval. He ticked a checkmark on the drawing to signify he approved it. His staff saw the check and figured it was something he wanted added... and so they did. He had a reputation for being pretty gruff and supposedly none of his staff wanted to ask him about it.

This

Yes Technically he didn’t make it go away, he was Q3’d for it by the 1st SOW/CC, then Col Slife. Obviously it didn’t impact his career any.

The below letter was written by Commander Robert A. Green Jr., U.S. Navy, and signed by 231 current and former Service Members from all branches of the United States Armed Forces. There was a time when I would have been put off by the tone and language here. Not anymore. I think it is entirely appropriate. https://freedomfighter1776.com/dma-accountability 1 January 2024 An Open Letter to the American People from Signatories of this Declaration of Military Accountability “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” –John Adams In the course of human events it sometimes becomes necessary to admonish the lawless, encourage the fainthearted, and strengthen the weak. We have reached just such a time in our history. The affairs of our nation are now steeped in avaricious corruption and our once stalwart institutions, including the Dept of Defense, are failing to fulfill the moral obligations upon which they were founded. Standing upon our natural and constitutional rights, we hereby apprise the American people that we have exhausted all internal efforts to rectify recent criminal activity within the Armed Forces. In the Declaration of Independence our founding fathers sought separation. We seek no separation, but through this letter and the efforts we pledge herein, we pursue restoration through accountability. We intend to rebuild trust and restore the rule of law, particularly within the Armed Forces. Ultimately, we strive to once again become a moral people, restoring our nation, and making it again worthy of the great gift of liberty won by the colonial-era American people. While implementing the COVID-19 vaccine mandate, military leaders broke the law, trampled constitutional rights, denied informed consent, permitted unwilling medical experimentation, and suppressed the free exercise of religion. Service members and families were significantly harmed by these actions. Their suffering continues to be felt financially, emotionally, and physically. Some service members became part of our ever-growing veteran homeless population, some developed debilitating vaccine injuries, and some even lost their lives. In an apparent attempt to avoid accountability, military leaders are continuing to ignore our communications regarding these injuries and the laws that were broken. For GEN Milley, ADM Grady, GEN McConville, ADM Gilday, ADM Lescher, Gen Brown, Gen Berger, Gen Smith, VADM Kilby, VADM Nowell, VADM Fuller, LTG Martin, Lt Gen Davis, MG Edmonson, GEN Williams, ADM Fagan, VADM Buck, Lt Gen Clark, MG Francis, LTG Dingle, Lt Gen Miller, RADM Gillingham, and numerous others; These individuals enabled lawlessness and the unwilling experimentation on service members. The moral and physical injuries they helped inflict are significant. They betrayed the trust of service members and the American people. Their actions caused irreparable harm to the Armed Forces and the institutions for which we have fought and bled. These leaders refused to resign or take any other action to hold themselves accountable, nor have they attempted to repair the harm their policies and actions have caused. Since there has yet to be any accountability, the undersigned give our word to do everything morally permissible and legally possible to hold our own leadership accountable. We intend to rebuild trust by demonstrating that leaders cannot cast aside constitutional rights or the law for political expediency. The flag and general officers are far from the only ones complicit in recent illegal activities, as a significant number of SES leaders and political appointees contributed. Evidence indicates that other executive agencies are engaging in illegal activity. However, as service members and veterans, we feel particularly responsible for the DoD and, in accordance with our oaths, we will make every effort to demonstrate by example, how an institution can put its own house in order. We the undersigned, on behalf of hundreds of thousands of service members and the American people, while appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for guidance and purity of intention, mutually pledge to each other that we will do everything in our power, through lawful word and action, to hold accountable military leaders who failed to follow the law when their leadership and moral courage was most desperately needed. In the coming years, thousands within our network will run for Congress and seek appointments to executive branch offices, while those of us still serving on active duty will continue to put fulfilling our oaths ahead of striving for rank or position. For those who achieve the lawful authority to do so, we pledge to recall from retirement the military leaders who broke the law and will convene courts-martial for the crimes they committed. For those of us who attain legislative offices, we pledge to introduce legislation to remove all retirement income for the military leaders who were criminally complicit, and we will ensure none serve in or retire from the Senior Executive Service. This endeavor will be a continuous process with a long-term time horizon, but fulfilling our oaths to defend the Constitution requires just such persistent vigilance. Likewise, we are obligated, and so commit, to train those who come after us to fulfill their duty in achieving this accountability and safeguarding against such leadership failures hereafter. Our nation was once great because it was good. It was built on moral principles founded in natural law and yet, the recent acceleration of moral relativism has us headed towards a precipitous implosion. While all good things come to an end, we refuse to allow our nation to go quietly into the depths of decadence and decay. We promise to exhaust all moral, ethical, and legal means to restore the rule of law and will begin by attempting to hold senior military leaders accountable. The Constitution is the supreme law of our land. We will fight to enforce that law and put an end to the two-tiered justice system. May future generations see our efforts and, God willing, may they also be recipients of the great gift of liberty that we have had the honor of safeguarding.

Other than that, would you say he's an ok guy?

This one snuck through the Senior Leadership a few years prior to my class. Take a close look at the hills and mountains. The Columbus Area is called “The Golden Triangle” this patch is epic!,, we were warned not to try anything remotely as awesome as these guys did, CBM Class 83-05 I Salute You!

Because you finish what you started...ABSOLUTELY a culture problem. At the first hint of trouble all the key FSU players ran for the door and themselves...that says something about a team. Meanwhile the vast majority of UGA's players stayed and PLAYED...one of the reasons they won Nattys back to back...FINISH what you started.

I’ve always hated the weaponized Q3 thing but the one I really don’t get is the Q3/Q1 or whatever it’s called. I’d never heard of it until I went to AIS and a bunch of AMC guys had horror stories of busting a level off by 100’ and immediately correcting or other minor things and getting Q-3 then immediately Q1 with no further action. Total lunacy.

42% of the team, 35 of the 85 players did not play in the game. It wasn't the third string players sitting out... Two of Georgia's players sat out. That game had absolutely no bearing on the level of talent that FSU or Georgia had. Some people say it is a culture problem, I don't see that. I think Mike Norvell has a great culture going on right now at Florida State. Why would players want to play a game that doesn't matter? And then risk getting hurt for no reason at all?

No SEC teams in the championship game (and shouldn't have even been one in the playoffs)... Maybe we can finally have a break from 'SEC is the only conference that matters' attitude next year.

Yes sir! They were still wearing little SAC (sts) patches under the AMC badge..One thing about flying with all those old SAC dudes, is I knew how to make my 69 pounds of paper pubs flawless. They really liked looking at those write in changes. They also made sure I knew my shit.. I think the MAC dudes that are still left in AMC are wanna be SAC and they give out Q3s for personal reasons and not because your pubs or you suck as an aviator.

Make sure you say "SAC Warriors" with some respect.

I went to your link (which covered far more than 2015-2017, it was an exhaustive archive) and here is some of the hard hitting evidence provided that Trump is a Russian stooge and the pee tape might be real. This kind of stuff might be damming proof that Trump is a pro-Putin traitor to you, but I do not draw the same conclusions. Do you have anything post-Ukraine invasion, since that was the context of this discussion?

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Because history shows how great it’s been with the US deposing strongmen. Oh wait, it is a total clusterfuck and causes a power vacuum.

The only Power 5 Florida school that didn’t lose a bowl game this season!!

This is one of the most abused lines of false reasoning I've heard used in attempts to back up nearly any argument these days. "I didn't see it so obviously ... *insert claim*" It's arrogant, irrational, and lazy. In my military career it was the go-to argument of every arrogant career climbing O-6 to justify why he didn't want to implement the COAs his team had just spent days creating to solve some problem. Absence of evidence is not evidence of anything. You choosing to be actively ignorant about what actually happens at the academies is simply evidence of your own intellectual habits. Are you grad? Have you ever been to the academies? You are looking at elite centers of education and research that are service centric and saying "I don't know why we have that." The Jet Lab at USAFA by itself sets it apart as an elite development center, not to mention the R&D done on aviation tech that takes place at the airfields. Have you ever seen the 105 hanging out the side an AC-130J? The aerodynamic fairings on and around it were initially designed by cadets as an aero department senior project. Or perhaps the cadet chemist who created a whole new style of body armor. I know for a fact the USA and USN both have equivalent stories. But I'm sure those kinds of developments would definitely happen at Berkley or Embry Riddle, so yeah, clearly we should shut down the academies. Come on man. If you're going to make an argument against them, please do. But put some meat behind it. Otherwise, pull your head out of the sand and do some observing.

I was surprised the WG/CC wasn't fired in addition to the OG.

Ahhh USAFA... like Big Blue, never passes up an opportunity by throwing money at problems in the attempt to get someone else to clean their house... What the Academy never seems to comprehend, or maybe even just acknowledge, is that a major contributing factor to many of their "problems" is that the place is full of cadets. (Yes, Edward Longshanks 'Braveheart' reference for the other grey-beards in attendance). Cadets are going to make mistakes-- a population demographic of 17-23 year olds, under intense pressure daily (debatable-- it was FAR tougher back in the day!), with limited and regulated pressure-relief options, suddenly given the anonymity of social media and intense social issues streaming around them-- some are going to make bad choices. If you read the referenced articles that came out of VMI back in 2020 (there are free ones that can be found other than the Washington Post's paywall), you can see the genesis of this issue-- apparently it's not relegated to the East Coast, but USAFA believes they have a problem. So, what would this silverback recommend? Lean into it. Get ahead of it. Build a center specifically to address these types of things-- call it the Character and Leadership Center. Build an old-school sundial to mark the location. Wait, they already did that? Seriously though-- I'd direct AOCs to get on the app and OBSERVE. DO NOT INTERACT! Look for the leadership lessons and get to the root causes of the statements rather than taking a comment purely at face value. Publish the quotes internal to your organizations and get your cadets talking about them. It has to be a conversation-- cadets will tune out a lecture. They're experts at it. All college students are. Like the Dodo of old, the cartoons we published were generally attacking an issue that we had at the time. E-Dodo, in some ways, made things worse by removing the oversight of the official publication. There were times that we pushed the limit just for the purposes of pushing the limit-- the kid in the back of the classroom who yells "F#CK" just because he knows he'll get a laugh and the punishment will be worth it. But does it contribute anything meaningful? But we also dealt with serious issues through humor and wit. Our idea was that if you could laugh at something, you could address it and move on. Unfortunately, the expletives for laughs ruined some of that credibility. Not all-- not every artist went down that same rabbit hole. Like the best instructors know-- look at what the student asked, then look at what they DIDN'T ask in that question. Same with statements made via this social media outlet-- look past the words and look at the issues that they're really commenting on. They're tough issues-- EXACTLY the kind of thing I want officer candidates working through in an ACADEMIC environment. Realize that some are going to take it too far-- it's a given with that age group. Expect it-- lean into it. Get ahead of it and show them where the off-ramps are before they run themselves too far in the heat of the moment. Some will no matter what you do. The ones that exhibit TRUE toxicity can be shown the door before they end up on the COMMANDERS ARE DROPPING LIKE FLIES thread. It's hard-- leadership is hard. Contracting out a solution will seem easy-- it's specific, measurable, and will seem attainable as printed on OPBs that get people promoted and off to their next assignment while the true problem still festers. Cadets will go deeper underground once the contractors show up on the threads. They'll spoof and move on. And contracting out leadership will only make the problem worse. But Zero, isn't your idea what they're trying to get at? Provide the examples so the Character and Leadership Center / AOCs can do their job? Maybe. But why use a middle-man then? And the worst part of the contract is the direction to de-anonymize the users. That's going to push them further underground and make your problem a maneuvering target. They're YOUR cadets. And guess what? This solution works for ROTC. It works even if there ISN'T an actual problem! It gets our future officers talking about what's going on around them. Too many instructors think that such discussions are a third-rail that carries the potential as career-ending suicide. Maybe. Maybe not if you do it right. Doing nothing or ignoring it is FAR worse in the long run. Lead them. Teach them. Cut the ones who don't make the grade. Remember that they're kids, and their vectors need to be adjusted. Mine sure did. I'm thankful for the mentors I had at the joint and every assignment afterwards who took the time to keep the engine running, but in a constant and consistent state of adjusting that thrust.

My wife: “you’re an idiot, why do you still do this when you know you get horrible hangovers?” Me: “Because it’s too fun the night before! Totally worth it….I think”

I’m currently on mil leave finishing up my retirement but looking at the January Bid lines out of Orlando they varied from 60-80 hours, some of them with 18 days off for the month. Since I’ve been gone for a couple years, I’m not sure what the high time flyers are getting, so I’ll leave that question for an active guy. Before I left though, the sky was the limit and as long as it was legal and you could put it on your board, you could bank $$$. Personally, life is great. I ended up having to take my ex back to court and won full custody of the kids (hence the reason I am putting the airline life on hold temporarily and finishing up the mil career). We are all extremely happy. I did end up getting remarried and she has been amazing and my kids all call her “mom”. My older two have pretty much nothing to do with their birth mom, and my youngest is the only one that goes for any sort of visitation. It’s funny what a little bit of wisdom, maturity and life experience will do for the second time around. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

In an effort to reduce suicides, the Air Force is making suicide illegal.

Even worse the same GO's give themselves a personal waiver. DJ was the perfect example, the non-SOF folks could have two beers per day (SOF was under GO 1 and could have two beers once a month), meanwhile the colonels and GOs would sit in the screened in porch at the while house drinking bourbon and scotch until two in the morning.

Prohibition doesn't work, and I'm sick of the knee jerk reaction to ban things for promises of safety. The same GO restricting booze sales to "keep Airmen safe" doesn't think twice about dropping a tasker at 1700 on Friday and sending those Airmen home to a furious wife after the kids are asleep. In my experience senior leadership should look in the mirror when trying to understand rising suicides in their force. Instead, they hit the easy button of restrictions & claim a halo for their duplicity.

At a certain point you realize that most people don't actually have political views. They have political positions. The difference is that a view requires research, dialogue, analysis, and for many things political, there's not a lot of reason for someone to do that. Why learn about abortion if you're not getting an abortion? Should the average American really have an opinion on Palestine when they don't even know where it is on a map? So whereas the military leadership class used to be conservative, it wasn't because they had conservative views, it was just because they wanted to be a part of the group of people who had conservative positions. Their superiors. Now that we are in a rapidly changing political environment thanks to the spread of populism, the military leadership class is suddenly seeming much more liberal than the lower ranks, because the political establishment of Washington is fiercely anti-populist, including most of the legacy Republicans. They were never conservative, and they're not truly liberals or progressives now. They're just yes-men. Groupies. Sycophants who will morph into whatever they believe will please their bosses most. And since Charlie Kirk runs on a platform of "government is the problem" and makes no exception for big-government Republicans, obviously the power players on Washington are going to despise him. And like good little soldiers hoping for a reward, the generals will follow suit, threatening the careers of anyone who dares question or criticize the political "leaders" the generals hope to please and one day join.

Just stay in, have the kid, take a year off, never be available when you come back, schedule kid appointments in the middle of the day, come off sorties constantly because “the baby had a rough night”, get sent to the wing after the article about being a fierce fighter pilot Queen that can do it all, get tagged for a deployment, immediately get pregnant again, repeat cycle.

Meh, we all did stupid stuff as lieutenants. 'Course the AF doesn't find out about most of it. I'm still waiting for the hammer to drop on some of shenanigans I pulled as a Lt and I've been retired for 7 years.

They should fly it single seat. Boeing can sell an optional aux gas tank for the back seat - win win!

Isn’t a call sign, it’s a nickname coined by some guys in the 15th when he was the DO & CC. Came from his habit of rolling into offices in the unit, completely upending/wrecking everything and leaving nothing but destruction in his wake. See Danger’s above comment as an example, when he was a Sq/CC he gave out 34 commander directed Q3s.

Looks like the committee got it right with FSU.